The present invention relates to a cube making and peeling machine for fruits, vegetables and the like, and in particular for tomatoes, which substantially comprises a first conveyor belt including a plurality of interexchangeable longitudinal equispaced parallel cables which, during the advancement motion of the first conveyor belt, will engage a cross top rotary extruder roller and a second bottom conveyor belt comprising a plurality of cross equispaced parallel blades.
The fruit slices, and in particular the preheated tomato slices, are deposited on the first conveyor belt and entrained toward the extruder roller.
As they are pressed between the extruder roller and cables of the first conveyor belt, the slices are downwardly pushed between the interspaces of said cables and are cut in longitudinal strips.
Simultaneously, the top end portions of the cross blades of the second bottom conveyor belt provide an upwardly directed pressure thereby forming on said strips cross cuts to reduce the strips into small cubes.
The skin and/or peel portion of the slices, during the operation, is engaged between the surface of the extruder roller and the cables forming the first conveyor belt, and are held engaged with these elements, to be successively detached and/or unloaded therefrom.
Through the interspaces included between the blades of the second bottom conveyor belt, the tomato and/or the like cubes are conveyed and discharged into a suitable collecting hopper.
The cubes are in a smooth or even condition and free of any skins.
As is known, in the food field and in particular in preparing vegetable products to be packaged in cans or the like, the vegetable products are preferably reduced to small pieces of cubes in order to facilitate all of the subsequent processing steps, in particular the preserving, cooking, mixing steps and so on.
In particular, tomatoes are conventionally processed by the above disclosed method in order to prepare tomato based food products, which find a broad use for preparing a lot of foods.
The qualities and advantages of these products, in addition to the basic vegetable characteristics of the used raw-materials, are evaluated depending on the amount of remaining peels or skins and depending on the maturing level of the used vegetables.
With a small remaining peel amount, and with a good maturing level, the quality of the product is considered very satisfactory.
Prior art methods of "cubing" and/or peeling the above mentioned products, use cubing and/or peeling machines which substantially comprise a square mesh net conveyor belt which is driven and held under tension by end rollers.
On this net there are discharged the products which are then conveyed under a plurality of rollers; the pressure provided by these rollers causes the products to be pushed through the net, thereby cutting the products into cubes having size substantially corresponding to the net mesh size.
Such a method, while it is satisfactory from a cube shape standpoint, is however affected by some limitations and drawbacks.
In particular, in this prior art method, hard parts can be introduced and/or processed together with the slices and portions of fruits or tomatoes to be cubed, these hard elements comprising, for example, not perfectly mature fruits, not perfectly cooked fruits or vegetables or wood pieces and the like.
As undesired hard portions are entrained between the end rollers and the net conveyor belt, the meshes of the latter can be deformed or broken, and these damages represent severe economical losses, since they require a full replacement of the conveyor belt, along stop of the system, and, accordingly, a consequent loss of yield.
Anyhow, the economic damage is a comparatively large one with respect to the single net of the conveyor belt: in fact, because of its configuration, the conveyor belt is very expensive.
Another drawback is that a central discharging of the products to be cubed and the construction of prior art cubing and peeling machines are not satisfactory: in fact, these prior art machines have a comparatively large size and their operation is not reliable.